


A Thousand Times Yes

by theclockiscomplete



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, I am only here to play, Other, Porn with Feelings, Tentacle Sex, this is levendis' sandbox, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 11:28:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13546395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclockiscomplete/pseuds/theclockiscomplete
Summary: Clara has had another self for a while now, but she still isn't alright with it. Not really. The Doctor, however, is fine enough with it for the both of them, and they'll keep reminding her until she is too.





	A Thousand Times Yes

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Long Live The New Flesh](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7374001) by [levendis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis). 



> There are a great many people who wind up writing tentacle sex with no idea how their life choices led them here. I'm not one of them. It's levendis. They started it. Go read their tentacle stuff-- it's seriously amazing. 
> 
> But do me a favor and read it after mine.

As soon as Clara was human shaped and mobile again, she fled. They watched her go, and when she was gone, the Doctor crouched beside a drop of her blood and winced at the sharp tug in their knee. They observed the silvery galaxy of mingled human and not-human blood swirling to a halt within the red, marveled at the way even this small part of Clara's body had come to reflect her spirit: beautiful and powerful and radiant in its complexity. Oh, Clara. It had been months since she'd become...augmented, greater, _more_ , but she'd suffer quite a lot before she had no choice but to call on her symbiont for protection.

  
And it was always _them_ she was protecting these days. She had been safe today, or as safe as anyone else, behind the walls of the encampment. The Doctor had stepped into the meadow to talk, a small and vaguely man-shaped figure in the shadow of...that. The thing that was like a dragon being actively consumed by a black hole, screaming in their mind and unable to give them a coherent thought no matter how they'd begged for it to try, please just try to let them help.

  
They'd caught the first blow on the side of their neck, exposed and soft as it was as they'd been staring up and up at its swirling face. A second to their legs as they staggered to catch their balance and down they went with no air for even a shout. Blood, yes, but something more sinister leaking from their shoulder, their jaw, staining their bloodstream and they had none of the words to warn Clara as she vaulted across the silver-grassed terrain, human shell quivering and fear in her eyes when they met theirs before she shuddered into _something more_ , and they lost consciousness with the memory of her tentacles shining blue, blue against the dark.

  
They had regained consciousness for just a moment as she carried their limp and bleeding body back to the TARDIS; they'd seen the silver blood on her tentacle and their sleeve, but could not fathom their significance. When they awoke fully, it was to find Clara sprawled entirely around them on the console room floor, unable to fly the ship and afraid to become small and hurt until she knew they were away, away.

  
They found her in the far corner of the TARDIS library: two arms, two legs, two eyes red and stubbornly dry. How large she seemed to them, this small quasi-human crouched in a pool of the warm amber light from the window tumbling down around the torn fabric across her shoulders, her knees, the shining smear of blood on her cheek. Their guardian, afraid.

  
They knew they had been seen, but she didn't move her gaze, fixed as it was on something in her mind that only she could see. They sat slowly beside her, arms braced behind them on the wall to keep the weight off of their injured knee. Whatever had been consuming the dragon creature, it had slowed both theirs and Clara's regenerative abilities to almost nothing, and the antidote they had swallowed and offered to her approximation of a mouth would take a while yet to flush out their bloodstreams.

  
They listened to the curves of her shadows breathing in the gold and the silence, wondering if there was a right thing to say.

  
In the end, they stuck to simplicity. "Thank you," they said. The disturbed dust motes shimmered before them like regeneration energy; they touched a hand to their throat and allowed the unease to swell and dissipate within them. It was only light. Clara looked at them then, at their fingers on their throat, and they waited for her touch-- hoped for it, even. Let it be a slap for their self-sacrificial idiocy, if she liked, or a gentle probing of the slowly healing wound. Touch was Clara's language, and flounder as they did in its dialect, they wanted to get her talking. She looked away again, shadows embracing and hiding her features as her fingers tightened around her knees.

  
"For what," she said, and it was not a question.

  
"Protecting me." Their voice was kind, and sadness clung to the words as the silence bent around them to support their weight. "You kept me safe, Clara, even moreso than usual."

  
Clara huffed a humorless laugh. "Don't thank me," she said. She gestured to her ribs, to the spot from which her otherness seemed to originate. "Thank it." Her voice wobbled almost imperceptibly on the last word.

  
The Doctor leaned into her field of vision until she looked at them. "Thank you," they repeated. 

She shook her head and though some of the tension withered away, she did not let go of her knees. "How's your neck?" she asked.

They began to suspect what was going on, why she hadn't reached out to ascertain for herself. "It's fine," they said gently. "Just taking its time healing." They hesitated, took a breath. "Will you show me?" they asked. Her grip tightened reflexively on her knees, and the look on her face confirmed his conclusion. "It's alright," they said. "You've been practicing."

"Negotiating," she said, and made no move to expand.

The Doctor waited. Sometimes silence worked and sometimes it didn't, but they were fairly certain that the two of them were entertaining the same brand of thought.

"That dragon," Clara began.

"Technically a polyform, but go on."

She ignored them. "The locals said it was friendly. Before."

"It was," they confirmed. "Having a antimatter parasite trying to unmake you tends to change things." He paused. "Oh."

Clara's mouth formed a thin line. She breathed deeply to beat back the panic, and then continued. "We don't know anything about this...thing." She gestured to the inside of her, the thing that had crawled into the body of Clara Oswald and made itself a home. "What if that's going to be me?"

They eyed her up and down. "I don't think you have to worry about turning into a great big dragon," they said. "Although it is a thought." 

She glared at them. "If you could stop getting off on my identity crisis, thanks."

"It's not--" the Doctor grunted in frustration. "I do appreciate your new form, Clara. Quite a lot. But if you doubt for a minute that I've been doing everything I can to help you..."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I know you have. And if this weren't something out of an H.P. Lovecraft novel, I might really like that you like it."

They snorted. "You? With a praise thing?" She let go of her knee just long enough to punch him in the arm. "It's not a parasite, Clara," they reminded her gently. They rubbed their arm as an afterthought. "It isn't harming you, or altering your personality, or making you do things you don't want to."

"Been paying close attention, have you?"

"Yes," they said seriously. Now her eyes swung up to him. "You," they said simply. When would she understand? "In any form, any container. You are always Clara Oswald." They touched her fingers, feather light, watching her reaction. There were more words they weren't saying. They were fairly sure she understood anyway. This was how they did things. "Let me see," they said, and hoped she heard the rest.

Clara shut her eyes and inhaled deeply. She steeled herself against the yet-unfamiliar sensation of wrong, and flexed the strange new muscle until a tendril made its way shyly from her side. The Doctor smiled, looking as much like a boy-shaped child as they always did. They reached out hesitantly, waiting for Clara's nod of assent before running a hand along the slick, cool surface. Tiny bristles clung harmlessly to the tips of their fingers as they probed gently at the silver gash; Clara hissed quietly at the contact.

They looked back at her face. "You felt that, then." 

Clara nodded miserably. "I felt it when it happened too," she said.

"Oh but that's wonderful!" the Doctor exclaimed. "That means your genetic makeup is successfully changing to accept this new part of you. Can you remember what happened, too?"

Clara filed their first statement away for now. Her tentacle curled slightly against itself as she thought. "I can remember most of it, yeah," she said. "It was like...like we agreed on what needed to happen. I think it wanted to protect you too."

"Clara," they said, and this time they reached for her face to hold it gently. " _You_ wanted to protect me." Her expression was uncertain, but she didn't look away. "Your symbiont doesn't have a will," they said for what must have been the hundredth time. It didn't matter. They would say it until she didn't need to hear it anymore. "That part of you is pure instinct," he repeated. "It just comes with its own shape."

  
"That overrides mine," Clara said. "And makes me forget. And weirdly unable to resist saltwater. And a tiny bit immortal, apparently" The Doctor swallowed their next words. She already knew them. "I'm Clara Oswald," she said helplessly. "Clara Oswald has never cared much for swimming and Clara Oswald is, above all things, mortal. Because she is human, and that is how it works."

  
"You're still Clara Oswald. Any container, any form," he repeated. "It's just that the definition has...improved a little bit."

She stared at them pointedly as another tentacle emerged, and a third, a fourth, until her human shape was more a vertex of tentacles suspended a few feet above the ground. The Doctor beamed up at her. "A lot a bit from your point of view," they said. "I know." Then, "you're getting really good at this."

"This is a lot from anyone's point of view," she said. "You're just daft."

"Ah, but there's nobody else here," they countered. The two of them were on familiar ground now. "Your definition of normal against mine, and I regret to remind you that my vote counts at least twelve times."

A tentacle wrapped around their mouth, silencing them but careful to avoid their wound. Its barbs and sticky skin reached up and tugged at their hair, playful, questing. They tried not to lean after it when it rescinded, leaving a raw, clean feeling in its wake.

"Sorry," Clara said. "You aren't healing as fast right now." She began pulling herself back into human form. 

They reached out and caught one of her arms in their hand, feeling it scratch and soothe against their palm. "Stay," they said pleadingly. "Let me see you."

Clara hesitated. The last time she'd gone full squid with the Doctor nearby and conscious, she'd destroyed something. Which they had told her quite cheerfully, because she could not remember. But she felt different this time, like an agreement had been reached. There wasn't much, after all, that she couldn't badger into submission-- least of all her own mind.

One of the tentacles reached for the Doctor, wrapping around their waist and curling near their collarbone. The tip of it rested against the undamaged side of their throat and she compressed with infinite slowness. She wondered if she would ever get used to this, the new fact of their fragility and the terrifying impulse to squeeze in the back of her mind. 

As though sensing her thoughts-- and maybe they could, like this-- they closed their eyes and tilted their chin up in a kind of defiance. Go on then. She pressed slightly harder. A small and strangled noise escaped them, but it was far from unfamiliar or pained, and she did not let go. "An improvement?" she asked, and there was amusement creeping into that second layer of her atmosphere, where her voice lived when she was sprawled out like this.

"Oh Clara," he choked. "You have no idea." The Doctor felt her pause, felt themselves lifted, and then she was fully her other self, surrounding him and holding onto every part of him with a shaky kind of bravado. Their eyes opened, and Clara-within, the part of her that still used eyes to see and and had a concept of breath to catch, gasped softly at their blown pupils, the intensity of them boring into her even as their breath came faster and shallower within her tentacles. She realized at that moment that there had been a part of her that still believed they were pretending to be okay with this for her sake, recognized the lingering doubt just as it retreated with its tail between its legs. 

She could feel-- what, their skin and their clothes, yes, but so much more. That second layer to him, the layer wrapped under that human-ish guise, and it was reacting every bit as strongly as their physical form. Observing closer, she got the impression that the sensations of the two were tied. She thought back to all of the times she'd had them facedown and open to her in her human form, only able to account for one half of them. This was so much more. The pulse beneath her arm was thready and erratic; the tempo of his other, non physical self quickening in tandem.

They had shown her that part of them, in the console room that day. Flipped a switch and become something more just like her. _We're in this together_ , the demonstration seemed to convey. Clara considered what it meant, that they'd shared that form and could inhabit it with her if they wanted, be her match in size and intensity, and they were still choosing to be this delicate shell of blood and bone resting within her. 

"You stay small to feel protected," Clara understood. "The universe's keeper, kept." 

"Hnngh," they replied, eyes half-rolled back. 

A chuckle rippled through her. She nudged their coat off, their hoodie, their shirt. It wasn't like the last time, a testing of their boundaries (there were none, not with her) or a half-present, shaky control. She could be here, Clara Oswald, semi-human, if they would never stop looking at her exactly the way they did when the last of their armor was removed and nothing separated their warm, dry skin from her. 

Clara touched the tip of a gold-lit tendril against their cheek, and their mouth took it in hungrily. She rested at the back of their throat, watched with fondness as their secondary respiratory system triggered to allow him to hold her inside him idefinitely. A tightening around their waist, a friction of shadow and light against what was intended to be their body's main receptor of pleasure, and their hips jerked gratifyingly for more, their second self buzzing under her touch. She laid a gentle caress along the curve of their arse, a question, and there was that look again on their face: naked adoration, pleading. She gathered their arms gently and held them together at the wrists above their head. Hers to do with as she pleased, and they would never be safer than they were right now. She slid between their legs, pulled their knees gently apart and bent, applying cool pressure to the injured one. She traced a slow, tender line from the tip of his spine to his hips and nudged inside them with infinite tenderness, watching the way they shuddered apart, feeling their limbs twitch in her grasp and the vibration of their strangled voice against the arm she half-pulled from his throat to hear the noises she was causing.

They were beautiful, pale skin reddening under her touch and the sweat-salt tang heavy on her senses. "Clara," they gasped around her. "Oh, Clara." She stroked their hair with a kind of soothing hum, feeling their chest swell and fall with their every ragged breath until--

She committed their hoarse cry to memory, the way their bound hands strained ineffectively against her as their body went rigid; the way the light spilled over their lashes and cheekbones in sharp relief, framing them like a perfect painting. She held them until their muscles gave out, and she was waiting for them when they slumped bonelessly against her. Safe.

Clara had no idea how this second form affected her mortality, she considered as she began to uncurl and lower the Doctor into the warm pool of light. She had no way of knowing how long she would have to gather their physical being and hold it safe within her like this when they needed it. But as her tendrils unwound gently past their reddened wrists, the backs of their trembling knees, the hollow behind their jaw, as the physical manifestation of them lay completely yielded to her touch, Clara thought with a surge of determination so strong that she saw their head turn slightly in response: _this creature is protected._

Clara watched them, glowing in the light and panting on the warm wooden floor, and cupped their flushed cheek in her small human fingers. She marveled at the difference in her ability to see, the simultaneous loss of that secondary sense and the regaining of the physical effects that the Doctor's gently twitching limbs and ragged breaths were having on her now. The thought that she had caused this, had broken this demigod into their component parts and given every part of them a safety they had not known for hundreds of years, was enough to bring her off at barely a touch. Her ego, she guessed as she snuggled up beside them and wrapped her arms around their chest, was clearly up to the challenge of a second container. Not that either of them had doubted it.

She reached over them for their coat and draped it so that it covered them both. They turned to her, eyes half open in a daze. They were wet. Clara's might've been too. She tugged them closer to her with her human strength and buried her face into their shoulder.

"You're incredible," they rasped.

She poked them very gently in the chest, avoiding a long and raw-looking welt. "I know that."

"No." They squirmed until eye contact had been reestablished. "Clara Oswald, you are incredible." They watched her face intently until she smiled gently back at them. Satisfied, their brow relaxed, their eyes closed, and they were asleep immediately. Clara lay beside them quietly, carefully evaluating her sense of self. It was still partial, shaky, slippery, but it she could almost look directly at it. She gathered the residual dread pooled in her belly and held it close, breathing deep. The fear was okay, as long as she had this anchor to return to. She was Clara Oswald, and they were the Doctor, and everything else was peripheral. Clara repeated the words in her mind until she fell asleep with her fingers tangled in theirs.


End file.
